Re: Earth's future alignment of doom?

On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:12:57 -0500, Dave Typinski <möbius@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Say, for sake of argument, that we had discovered the decay of
individual radionuclides before we discovered the concept of half
life. Say we only had a small number of observations--too few to be
statistically significant. Would nuclear decay have been ascribed to
a supernatural process? Or would we look for some law that governs
the phenomenon?

Well, what I said earlier was that we would look for some sort of
pattern, and failing to find it, might eventually _consider_ that we
were seeing something that was supernaturally influenced. Depending on
the phenomenon, it might take an awful lot of study before rational
people started asking if a supernatural explanation was best.

On the other hand, if a big hole in the clouds occasionally opened up,
and what appeared to be a giant tongue rolled out, accompanied by a
booming voice (heard, but never recorded), "I am the LORD your DOG", and
the Earth trembled (but didn't record on seismographs) until 20 virgins
tipped bowls of water on the ground... well, people might accept a
supernatural explanation for that somewhat quicker.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
.